Infamous Second Son: Powerful

Updated7 April 2014 — 7:13amfirst published at 6:40am

The lively Second Son clearly has ambitions to be more serious than its Infamous PS3 predecessors, but even with the deeper political undercurrent it’s still a comic book romp at heart. And it’s lots of fun.

The new protagonist Delsin is not just another teenager hoodlum with a spray can. He can absorb the powers of other superhuman simply by touching them.

Infamous: Second Son is out now for PlayStation 4 for $99.95.

Despite a dull opening, Delsin quickly learns thrilling new superpowers and enjoys using them a lot more than his dour predecessor Cole McGrath. It’s not long before players are causing chaos in a breathtaking downtown Seattle in the fight against the oppressive Department of Unified Protection for mutant rights.

The combat against the intelligent enemy forces can be thrilling as you creatively utilise your interesting and varied powers to both attack and evade. For example, smoke powers enable Delsin to use vents to dive into at the base of a building and hurtle out from the roof, taking shots at opponents as you glide down to a nearby rooftop.

There’s terrific freedom to tackle situations differently, and many opportunities to use Delsin’s frenetic speed and climbing abilities. Unleashing the devastating “Karma Bombs” is also a real buzz.

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The story touches on interesting issues of whether security is worth the cost of freedom, and the fear of the unknown, yet is underdeveloped.

Moral choices offer simplistic binary decisions between the altruistic hero or powerful villain, but don’t impact the action or story considerably.

Despite the open world there’s also not much in the way of interesting diversions, although it’s also mercifully free of unwanted padding.

Fortunately, just concentrating on the spectacular action is more than sufficient to have a great time, and as you are granted more and more skills it’s hard not to share Delsin’s enthusiasm for his wonderful powers.